


Reaching Out

by Rainne



Series: Thank-You Fics [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes & Darcy Lewis Friendship, Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Car Accident, Darcy Lewis-centric, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 16:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3985069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainne/pseuds/Rainne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you have to be willing to let yourself be helped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reaching Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twistedingenue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedingenue/gifts).



> This fic is part of my Thank-You Fics, so called because they have been written as thank-you gifts to people who have donated to my mother's cancer fund, which is helping to pay for my mother's chemotherapy treatments and eventual surgeries.
> 
> If you would like to know more about my writing and my gift fics and how to get a Thank-You Fic of your own, please visit [this Tumblr post](http://rainnecassidy.tumblr.com/post/118466323344/please-help). Thanks.

"You know," the voice says, "this really isn't supposed to work this way."  There's a long silence, and then it continues.  "You're supposed to be the one sitting over here waiting to lecture me about being reckless and stupid, and I'm supposed to be the one lying there with casts and bandages and things."  There is the sound of a deep breath.  "So, I need you to go on and wake up so I can make with the lecturing."

"The more you talk," she manages around a dry throat and mouth, "the less I want to wake up."

His hands are warm on hers, and his fingers gently touch her face. "Darcy?" he murmurs. "Need you to open your eyes, babe."

Her eyelids flutter briefly, but she groans and squeezes them shut after a minute. "Too bright," she complains.  Then she adds, "Happened?"

"You were hit by a car," Clint replies, going to shut the overhead light off.  "A drunk driver ran a red light.  See if you can open your eyes now."

She tries again, and focuses on his worn, seamed face. "Hey," she manages. "Water?"

He brings her a cup and gives her a sip through a straw.  "There," he says. "Better?"

"Yeah." The cool, blessed relief of the water washes over her mouth and down her throat, and she takes another long drink before relaxing back into her pillow. "How bad?"

"Could be worse," Clint says. "Fractured pelvis, that's the worst part of it.  Bruising, some road rash.  Concussion.  You've been out for a couple of days."  _You had me worried,_ he doesn't say.

She hears it anyway and raises one hand clumsily, ignoring the bandages on her arm and reaching for him.  "C'mere," she says, and when he takes her hand, she tugs him toward her. "Lie down with me."

"Darce, no," he says, pulling back. "You're hurt."

"Said lie down, not ravish me," she shoots back. "Want you here. Cold."

"Oh, well, why didn't you say so?"  He looks around the room.  "I'll get you another blanket."

" _No,_ Clint," she says firmly. "Want _you._ "

He gives up and comes to her side, sliding carefully onto the bed and lying down next to her on his side. "Better?" he asks, once she's had a chance to shift up against him.

"Much," she says softly.  She reaches up and runs her fingers over the new lines on his face. "You've been worried," she says simply.

"Yeah," he agrees, catching her hands and holding them gently in his. "I, uh.  I'm pretty sure I haven't slept since the call came in.  I know I haven't been home.  So if I smell bad..."

"You're fine," she assures him, smiling. "Smell like that manly candle off Tumblr."

And Clint has to laugh at that, even as tears shine in his eyes.  "God," he whispers, and his head falls forward to rest on top of her shoulder.  "God, I almost lost you. And it wasn't even something worthwhile.  Just some asshole who was too drunk to get behind the wheel of his car."

She strokes her fingers through his hair. "They get him?" she asks.

"Oh yeah," Clint assures her. "Plenty of witnesses, plus traffic cam footage.  Stockbroker from Jersey on a four-martini lunch break."

Darcy snorts.  "Figures."  She closes her eyes. "Tired," she murmurs.

"Sleep," he tells her, running his hands through her hair. "I'll stay right here with you."

"Kay," she whispers, and "Love you."  And then she's gone.

~*~

She spends several more days in the hospital as they wean her off the pain meds and replace them with Tylenol, and isn't let to go home until she promises to go to the Tower, where Clint and the others can help her, instead of home to her third-floor Blissville walk-up. 

If she's honest, the idea of a building with an elevator really sounds better anyway.

She's welcomed to the Tower with open arms; most of the Avengers have had quarters there since the Chitauri Incident but since that awful thing with Ultron, they've all basically been based full time out of the Tower or the new upstate facility.  For now, they're all in the city - Steve with his improbable and damaged friend Bucky and Wanda helping Pietro recover from his terrible wounds and everyone else sort of reeling from the craziness - and that's good for Darcy, because it means there's almost always someone available to help her if she needs help.

Clint, of course, is almost always by her side, but when he isn't there, Bucky Barnes tends to hover just around the edges of her awareness, looking like a scraggly hobo and ready to jump if it seems like she needs something.   Darcy smiles at him and tries to coax him closer, but he's like a feral cat: if she notices him too enthusiastically, it frightens him and he runs away.  Once she notices this, she begins treating him like a feral cat.  She ostentatiously ignores him, but she's careful to sit at one end of a long couch so that the other is totally empty, and sometimes if she sits still enough, he'll come and sit with her.  She keeps snacks close by, so there's always food, and as long as he sees her eat some of it first, and she makes it explicitly clear that she wants him to share with her, he will also eat whatever she has. 

Her first week at the Tower passes uneventfully.  That, of course, is when the nightmares start.

The first one is pretty tame: just a replaying of the accident itself, or what she remembers of it: crossing the street at the light, the impact, the sensation of being thrown through the air. She wakes in a cold sweat, panting, but is able to get to sleep again without too much trouble.

After that, though, her brain gets more creative.  First the car misses her and hits someone else - some random bystander - while she's forced to watch.  Then, when her jerkbrain decides the random bystander isn't quite traumatic enough, it starts substituting other people.  People she knows.  Friends from high school.  Her mother.  Bucky.  Jane.  Clint. 

When she starts crying in her sleep, it wakes Clint, and he's able to wake her, but by that time the damage is usually done.  He wants her to go talk to someone, but she insists that it'll get better on its own.  She's never been terribly comfortable with baring her soul to strangers, and even though she knows counseling works for some people, it isn't really her gag.  She stops sleeping at night for awhile; instead, she naps off and on during the day.  This works well until the nightmares start creeping up on her there, too.

Ironically enough, it's Bucky who convinces her to see someone about the nightmares.  He wakes her up from a nap on the common room couch, an expression of worry and fear on his face that she's never seen before.  She wakes from this dream just as the car runs over her sister's eight-year-old daughter and stares blankly up at Bucky for just long enough that he starts to back away, worried that he's frightened her.  Then she covers her face with her hands, rolling a little bit into the cushions. "Ugh," she groans. "Thank you for waking me."

He comes creeping back after a minute to sit down on the floor beside her, and he says, very softly, "I have nightmares, too."

She looks up at him, but he's looking away.  She doesn't speak; she waits for him.  And because he's a feral cat, he finally comes to her.  "Sometimes I dream about what they made me do.  Sometimes I dream about what they did to me to make me do it."

And now she doesn't speak because she doesn't know what to say. What _could_ she possibly say to give comfort to this man, who has suffered so much?  There's nothing.  Instead, she reaches out and gently squeezes his right bicep.  He looks up at her then, studying her face for a long time.  He finally nods, giving her the slight upward twitch of his lips that is still the only smile he can manage to muster.

"Anyway," he says softly, "Sam found me this lady I talk to sometimes. She's real nice.  She lets me tell her what I dream about, and she tells me it's okay to dream about it and to think about it, but it's not okay to dwell on it.  And I'm not really supposed to feel guilty about it, even though sometimes I do and I can't help it, because responsibility for an action is diminished and sometimes nullified by fear and duress."

The last bit has the feeling of a quotation, and she raises an eyebrow in question. He twitches his lips upward again.  "She found it in the Catechism," he explains. "I had to memorize it."

Darcy nods.  She shifts to try to sit up, and he helps her, and she sits back against the couch and sighs.  "All right," she says softly.  "I can out-stubborn Clint because he's one of the world's worst about not wanting to talk to the shrinks, but I guess I can't out-stubborn you, can I?"

"Well," Bucky says, considering, "you can try.  But I don't think you'll manage it."

~*~

Clint tries hard not to be too smug when she agrees to go to counseling and when, subsequently, her nightmares begin to diminish.  She still has them, but only occasionally, and they go back to featuring normal things like being chased or showing up to a final exam naked and with no Blue Book.

Darcy takes a little bit of the wind out of his sails when, in front of him, she thanks Bucky for convincing her to go - but it's okay, because she loves him and  he knows it and needling one another is just one of their favorite ways of showing affection.

~*~

The guy who ran her down gets two years in prison, and he blubbers all over himself when she appears in the courtroom, in a wheelchair, being pushed by Hawkeye and accompanied by Captain America himself.  Steve wants to speak at the guy's sentencing, get him locked away for as long as possible, but Darcy talks him down in soothing tones.  "He'll get what's coming to him," she says.  "Believe me, if me showing up in a wheelchair doesn't do the trick, your Voice of Disapproval isn't going to do anything."

Clint doesn't want to speak at the sentencing.  He wants to beat the guy bloody with his bare hands.  It's probably best if he _doesn't_ speak at the sentencing.

Afterward, he and Steve take Darcy to lunch at her favorite taco place.  "I'm going back to work next week," Darcy announces.  Clint is clearly not in favor of this idea, but he doesn't say anything; he and Darcy have had this conversation already. She's tired of sitting around and feeling useless.  "Tony's getting me a motorized wheelchair," she adds.  "So I can get around without being pushed."

Steve's face goes through a remarkable set of contortions. "Is that a good idea?  You remember what happened when he tried to upgrade Bucky's arm."

"I made him promise to buy one, not make it, and he's not allowed to give it any non-cosmetic aftermarket addons."  Darcy shakes her head.  "I've already fractured my pelvis; I don't need to be shattering my spine, too."

Late that night, Clint slides into bed beside Darcy and props his head up on his fist, staring down at her.  "I love you," he says after a long moment of silence. "I know I'm not the best at being in relationships, and sometimes I'm a big boat of fail, but I do love you."

"I know," she replies easily, smiling up at him. "And you're not a big boat of fail. You're a very tiny boat of sometimes-makes-mistakes, just like everybody else on the planet."

He chuckles, leaning over to kiss her gently.  "Very tiny, huh?"

"Well," she replies, smirking, "maybe not _very_ tiny." 


End file.
